In this thought-provoking episode of No Man’s an Island, Chris Hemmings speaks with Professor Ben Hine, one of the UK’s leading researchers on men and boys. As Chair of the Male Psychology Section of the British Psychological Society, co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition, and a professor at the University of West London, Ben has spent his career exploring how culture, policy and ideology shape our understanding of gender, victimhood and care.
Ben discusses his path from studying violence against women to investigating male experiences of domestic abuse, parental alienation and post-separation control. He shares how an evidence-based approach led him to question the ideological polarisation around gender and to advocate for a more balanced, compassionate view of men’s mental health.
The conversation also dives deep into the psychology of family breakdown and the long-term impact of alienation on children. Drawing from both professional and personal experience, Ben explains how damaging it is when a child’s bond with a parent is deliberately broken – and why recognising this as a safeguarding issue, not a gender issue, is crucial.
Together, Chris and Ben unpack why society often struggles to empathise with male suffering, how academic and political spaces have become polarised, and what can be done to bring evidence and empathy back into public debate.
What we cover
- How Ben’s research evolved from gender-based violence to male victimhood
- The importance of evidence over ideology in gender psychology
- Understanding parental alienation and the harm it causes children
- How personal experience shaped Ben’s advocacy and academic work
- The gender stereotypes that silence men’s pain
- Why empathy and evidence must coexist in conversations about abuse
- The mental health impact of family breakdown on separated fathers
- How cultural bias and policymaking often exclude men
- What effective support for families and fathers could look like
Listen and watch
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Takeaways for men
- Evidence and empathy both matter when talking about men’s issues.
- Parental alienation isn’t a gendered problem – it’s a child safeguarding issue.
- Silence around male victimhood reinforces shame and disconnection.
- We must make it safe for men to seek help after separation and loss.
- Changing the narrative on men and care benefits families, not just fathers.
Quotes to share
“Gender equality isn’t about taking sides. If I talk about male victims, it’s not to the detriment of female victims.” – Professor Ben Hine
“You can’t even walk into some rooms and say there are male victims of domestic violence without people pushing back. That tells you how politicised it’s become.” – Professor Ben Hine
“When a child is alienated from a parent, you’re attacking their attachment system – the foundation of who they are.” – Professor Ben Hine
“We’ve lost the space for reasonable debate. It’s time to get back to evidence and empathy.” – Professor Ben Hine
Resources and links
- Professor Ben Hine – University of West London
- Men’s Therapy Hub – Find a Male Therapist
- Episode 10 – Silence, Shame and the Third Door with George Bell
Episode credits
Host: Chris Hemmings
Guest: Professor Ben Hine
Produced by: Men’s Therapy Hub
Music: Raindear
TRANSCRIPT:
Chris (00:02)
Welcome to No Man’s An Island, a podcast powered by Men’s Therapy Hub. That’s a directory of male therapists for male clients. I’m Chris Hemings. Before we get to today’s guest, I actually want to say thank you to all of you who listen to us. When you create something like this, you never really know if anyone’s going to actually engage with it. But within just a couple of months, there were nearly 70 of you following and subscribing. That’s awesome. Given that, if you could each do one thing to really help out, please follow us if you don’t. And also,
It’s really helpful if you rate the show on either Apple or Spotify, if that’s where you listen. We’re about to get into the crunch time for when shows like ours sink or swim, and each vote of confidence will help it reach more listeners as it gets pushed out by the algorithm. So go on, you can even do it right now. It only takes 20 seconds. Please? All right, that’s enough begging. On this episode, I’m gonna be talking to Ben Hine. He’s a professor of applied psychology at the University of West London.
and one of the UK’s leading experts on the lives of men and boys. His work focuses on parental alienation, family breakdown, on the often hidden experiences of male victims of domestic abuse and post-separation control. He’s chair of the male psychology section of the British Psychological Society. It’s a bit of a mouthful. And he’s the co-founder of the Men and Boys Coalition. He’s also author of two books, Parental Alienation and Current Issues Facing Men and Boys. Welcome, Ben.
Ben Hine (01:28)
Thank so much for having me, I’m happy to be here.
Chris (01:32)
Great. So the first question we ask every guest on this podcast is, how did you end up in this space?
Ben Hine (01:41)
Yes, really interesting question, I think. And it’s been quite a journey to get here in the sense that, you when I was going through my undergraduate psychology degree and just the general ⁓ machinations of university life, kind of was, fell into quite an archetypal role of a man in psychology, you know, was kind of quite
right on and really focused on anything to do with ⁓ women’s issues in the space of gender. And it was only when I then started to become a researcher myself and building my independent research program. And I did a lot of work in that space. So towards the start of my career, I looked at investigation of sexual violence when women are victims. I looked at domestic violence when women are victims. And it was through doing that that I
just continually felt myself butting up against this question of where’s the exploration of men in these spaces and just seeing that that was a kind of quite a glaring gap and using that to kind of really expand my positioning around gender and gender issues and then exploring some of those things and meeting really valuable people along the way that really helped. So, you know, meeting people like Liz Bates at Cumbria University who does stuff on male victims and
chatting with her and really kind of having these ⁓ open and really balanced conversations about things that affect men and things that affect women and how do we get to these positions where we have these stereotypes and kind of grew from there really and just decided to maybe make it my thing and carve out a space for myself as someone who wanted to kind of some of the academic dialogue on men’s issues more broadly. ⁓
hopefully doing so in quite a evidenced and balanced way.
Chris (03:44)
balanced conversations around gender. It’s not often you hear that spoken.
Ben Hine (03:49)
Yeah, well, and this is, you know, it’s difficult because so many of the conversations that we need to have in this space and in life generally obviously require nuance and it’s a kind of quality that a lot of our platforms and a lot of the ways that we consume information nowadays don’t allow for. So, you know, if you look at how a lot of communication happens nowadays and it’s in much shorter segments, it’s trying to cater for
attention spans that are being squished down into nothing and often that robs debates and discussions of the vital nuance that is needed. So you know it’s very easy for example in this space to be misrepresented in terms of what you’re saying based on that. But I think it’s really important that we fight to keep that as part of those conversations because everything in this space is complicated, it’s nuanced, it’s you know it’s got intricate details to it and
we need spaces like this podcast to get into it properly rather than having to try and shove it into 180 characters or whatever.
Chris (04:56)
And the podcast, the idea of this podcast is to create places where we can challenge our guests, they can challenge us, we can have difficult conversations and try to meet eye to eye on them because we are never going to agree on everything. I did a talk in a school once and the response was, well, your job was to get a hundred percent of the audience on board. And I said, I’m doing the talk on gender.
If I’m doing a talk that gets 100 % of the audience on board, there’s no point me being there. The very nature of your job, and we’ll get into this, because I know that you have ruffled more than a few feathers with your work. The very nature of the job is to shift, or let me ask you the question. Do you see the very nature of your job to try and gently shift the Overton window?
Ben Hine (05:44)
One of the key things I say to students, especially in our discipline, in psychology in particular, but in most disciplines is, we as educators and them as future psychologists and everyone in this discipline, we’re not here to prove or transmit a certain knowledge to anyone else.
What we are here to actually do is to equip you with the skills to continually challenge and debate and discuss because that’s how our collective understanding of any given phenomenon kind of churns along. ⁓ And so, you know, it’s that kind of example you said, ⁓ I was expected to get 100 % of people on board with me. Well, you know, that should never really be a goal. It should be you need 100 % of the people to leave thinking about the idea that you’re presenting. ⁓ And so
you know, I think as long as you take a principle, which I always try to do that you whatever position you’re coming up is grounded in the best available evidence, I think you should always start from that standpoint. As long as you have that to kind of provide the foundation for your argument, you’re then not looking to really convince anybody of anything, you’re looking to get them to ask the question of themselves and get them to ask the question of the area that you’re trying to present to them.
And I think that’s, you know, like you said, when you’re trying to introduce particularly difficult topics or sensitive topics, you know, we, have plenty of those in this area. I think it’s more about whenever I run training or workshops, it’s about trying to leave people thinking rather than trying to leave them to say, this is now how you should be.
Chris (07:27)
And to go back to your answer to the first question, when you first entered the psychological world, let’s call it, I’ve seen you speak about the dangers of bringing ideology into a space like that. In your view, where has psychology, or where at least when you first entered psychology, where had it become ideological about the idea of gender in a way that you perceive it to be unhelpful?
Ben Hine (07:56)
That’s a really interesting question. think the first thing I would say is that I wouldn’t single out psychology. I would look at psychology and some of the positioning that the discipline has taken over the years or the BPS has taken over the years or individuals have taken over the years as symptomatic of a kind of broader groupthink around this area where you know
there are lots of ideas and pieces of evidence that have then become heavily politicised and utilised for different agendas and the evidence that we have had has been warped or presented in a biased way to make it look very different to what it’s actually saying in order to serve an agenda. so, well, I mean, you could take any kind of example. You know, the famous one I give to students is
Chris (08:43)
Like what?
Ben Hine (08:53)
and I can’t remember the specifics of the time and the date, but there was a study that was published ⁓ looking at exercise and its benefits for men versus women, and one of the activities that was listed under the exercises was housework. And through the kind of translation process to popular media, it got presented in an article that said, housework benefits women. And that is a completely, ⁓ you know,
mashed up misrepresentation of what the study was trying to do. we, I mean, we see that day in and day out. That’s part of our challenge with scientific communication is to make sure that doesn’t happen. The broader point is that I think we’ve got to a position where so much of that has happened and so much of our discussion within the area of gender psychology has become politicized. It’s now freezing out the very process of discussion, discussing things in a rational way.
And you could relate that to something, you know, very hot topic at the moment around transgender identity and transgender rights, or you could look at it in male domestic violence, or you could look at it in any area where we see gender being a relevant factor, to see very clearly that the strength of the positioning and the kind of ideological approach and the political approaches is so strong that you’re kind of
maybe losing in some scenarios the ability to even reasonably and rassurably debate things and to argue for, you know, I mean, I have walked into spaces where simply stating a government backed fact that there are male victims of domestic violence, that as a foundational statement has been challenged because it sits so vehemently against the
idealized and also political positioning of violence as a female issue, that there’s not even any space for me to begin to talk about the fact that not only do these men exist, but they have a gendered experience and probably more of them exist than we ever knew. And, you know, I have rented very hostile spaces before when all I’ve viewed I’m doing is putting forward an evidence based approach. So I think that what you’re talking about is symptomatic of a broader issue in society.
where we have such vehement polarisation, strength of opinion, black and white thinking and adoption and mashing up of evidence to support ideological and politicised narratives that you’re crushing the really necessary evidence-based debate that we need in these areas.
Chris (11:39)
What was it like for you in those early days in particular when you were still probably quite green ⁓ as a researcher and as a public speaker because you know you don’t just automatically become a good public speaker because you’re an intelligent researcher those two things are very different as is proven on social media the very opposite can be true ⁓ that you suddenly start to see things through a prism of well hang on yes and
which is the approach that I really encourage people to take. And it’s what I really tried to push ⁓ back against George from the Tin Men, but actually George is continually doing the yes and approach. And so it’s very hard to disagree with him because he’s never saying that we shouldn’t be looking at women’s issues. We should just be saying, also men. But that’s not how people hear it. People hear it as a direct threat and challenge because there is only so much… ⁓
Ben Hine (12:12)
Right.
Chris (12:39)
cognitive space and social media space that we can take up with these conversations, which obviously I disagree with. I’m pretty sure you disagree with. Many people listening, I hope, will disagree with. ⁓ But you started somewhere. You started one day in a room and you must have gone, hey, actually, I don’t consider this to be, what was it? Like, what was your kind of starter for 10?
Ben Hine (13:06)
Yeah, I mean, what you’ve hit the nail on the head there is around this fallacy. nowadays I often start with this opening salvo of saying, just so everyone’s on the same page, gender equality isn’t a zero sum game. So if I’m coming in here talking about male victims, it is not to the detriment and I weave it into all of my research and papers just to be clear, it is not at the, yeah, caveats are not at the detriment. look, I shouldn’t have to, because it should be obvious, but I do because it has to be absolutely clear.
The other thing to mention is it’s particularly difficult as a man in this space talking about those issues, because then you get, you know, you’re just viewed as someone who doesn’t understand, you know, women’s issues. And that’s why you’re talking about men’s issues. And that’s why I lean on and love that we have so many passionate female researchers fighting in this area as well. In all, in answer to your question, I mean, it’s probably a mix of a few random things. The first being that I’ve never been particularly
faced by public speaking, that always helps. A lot of people are, I just, I don’t know, I’m fairly immune to it. And also I don’t know whether my, I don’t know whether there’s part of kind of neurodivergent factors that mean I just kind of ignore or don’t care as much about what people interpret in the room. But you know, you definitely sensed, I definitely sensed in those first years when I was kind of breaching ⁓ or broaching, sorry, these topics.
that there was this energy shift in the room, people weren’t happy kind of hearing ⁓ this kind of argument. I think two things that really helped was just, I had this staunch commitment to evidence. I was a proper diligent psychology student and I’d really bought into this idea, the correct idea that you look to the evidence and that’s what you go with. And I don’t know, I think a lot of people lost sight of that actually.
So I was just like, well, this is what my evidence says. mean, challenge it if you want, you’re challenging the evidence in front of you. And also the support of other people. mean, you have to operate as a network in this space, especially, know, generally, think academia makes us quite insular and that’s a bad thing. So generally, we need to be collaborating more. But I particularly when you’re tackling difficult topics, you know, I’ve relied really heavily.
on my colleagues in this space, on other institutions, people like Liz, Nikki Graham-Kavane, Jenny McKay, all of these wonderful women, I should note, who, ⁓ you know, we get together and we reinforce each other and we make sure that we’re all not being collectively gaslit out of our conviction, you know, and out of our evidenced approach. We say, no, no, we’re not the crazy ones. And so, yeah, we just, you know, that whole mix of things has just led me over the years to keep standing up in rooms, I guess, and just saying.
look, you this isn’t a zero sum game. If I’m here to talk about male victims, it’s not the detriment of female victims. And actually, a lot of the things I’m saying, you’re probably going to be surprised. So just give me a second to get into it before you judge because a lot of the stuff I’m going to talk about is about how there’s shared risk and shared societal stereotypes that detriment both. So just just give me a minute before you judge. you know, I think it’s it’s yeah, it’s got better over the years for sure.
Chris (16:25)
From a therapeutic perspective, the dismissal of male victimhood, all that does is reinforce to that man, I’m not worthy of care, ⁓ society doesn’t care about my pain. And actually what it does is reinforces what many people would describe as, quote, the patriarchy. It is so absurd. That’s my two cents. The thing I’m interested for you is possibly, and maybe you’ll disagree with this,
Ben Hine (16:35)
you
Chris (16:54)
possibly your biggest area of pushback is in the realm of parental alienation. So for those that don’t know, can you outline parental alienation? Because you’ll be one of the first who’s really kind of brought this to the surface and labeled it and named it and is pushing it out. And it’s had a lot of pushback.
Ben Hine (17:15)
First of all, that’s very kind. think I would say I’m one of the people in the UK that’s talking most about this from a psychological perspective. have, you know, in any kind of circumstance, I would have to acknowledge, I mean, the amazing and titans in this area that have gone before me, mainly though in the US and Canada. I think I’m trying to build that in our European awareness. But for those, you know, for those who aren’t familiar with the concept, this is the scenario where you have
Chris (17:22)
Okay.
Ben Hine (17:44)
parent, let’s call them parent A, who is engaging in behaviors that are specifically designed to break the relationship and break the bond between their child or children and the other parent. And those alienating behaviors then result in the child resisting contact with that parent for no good reason, because they have been fed this narrative about that parent. So that’s essentially parental alienating behaviors and then the outcome of parental alienation. And it’s
Commonly occurs ⁓ in, if it’s going to occur, it commonly occurs in separation, family breakdown, and it occurs for a variety of different reasons, some personality based, some situational, and of course has huge, huge damage on the children and of course the parents, targeted parent involved.
Chris (18:32)
which all sounds pretty simple. What is it that you experience as the vitriol and the pushback against that?
Ben Hine (18:36)
you
Yeah, I mean, look, what I’ve tried to do in in my ⁓ recent book, my upcoming book on the subject and my review papers on the subject to my empirical work on the subject is try to bring us to a position where we can wade through the areas where there is a general scientific consensus and the areas where there is not because there is still a lot of discussion to be had around PA and what it looks like.
I think what I’ve tried to do in that work is I’ve tried to delineate between understanding about the phenomenon and what it is and the damage it does, which has reached scientific consensus and that’s been outlined in several papers, and the areas where there is further debate to be had, which is how it’s operationalised, for example, in family courts and what we then do about it, so how interventions are delivered. And to answer your question of what kind of pushback has there been and why do we think that is,
I think that, you know, as with any areas that develop and change over time, you know, this concept, the modern day concept that we have had problematic origins. There have been examples where actors in family court spaces, predominantly fathers, have potentially used these claims to ⁓ erase their own abusive behaviour. And I’ve no doubt that that has happened and still happens in some circumstances.
However, that happens for lots of different behaviors. There are plenty of actors who go into family court claiming other forms of abuse when those claims are erroneous for their own gain and for their own purpose. And so my work at the moment, and as someone who came into this area, you know, four or five years ago, I wasn’t around in the eighties when a lot of this work was happening, is saying to then discredit a concept based on empirical current research is basically the equivalent of
discrediting all of psychology because Freud said some slightly wacky things, you know, we’ve come along, we’ve done more work and we’ve solidified ourselves around this, this concept. But as we talked about before, you know, it’s one of those things that has formed a really strong position in a lot of ⁓ ideological and politicised spaces. ⁓ And, you know, as someone who
is reading the literature and looks at it from an academic point of view. You know, like you said, it seems pretty straightforward and that’s some of the positioning I put forward in my books and my papers to say, well, yes, some of these things are pretty straightforward. We know what it looks like. We know what behaviors are involved. We know what the impact is. There are lots of things we actually do know. And that I actually agree with some of the critics who talk about its use in family court because I say, look, we’re on the same side here.
We want to make sure that when claims are being brought, they’re being brought legitimately, it’s clear why they’re being brought, they’re being investigated well. ⁓ But it’s often not interpreted in that way. It’s interpreted that it’s a distinctly male phenomenon. It’s abusive dads who are covering up their own abuse. ⁓ And therefore, I’m, as someone who’s advocating for this, I’m protecting them somehow, which is deeply disappointing because just to finish my ⁓ bit here is that I have…
a unique position on this subject because I have a personal and a professional experience of this. So I look at it in terms of my academic work, but I was also a child who was alienated from a parent. it’s invalidating on two fronts when people say it doesn’t exist.
Chris (22:13)
And of course the child is the common denominator in terms of who is the main victim of it and the person it affects in every case. And we’ll come on to that in a moment. Is part of this what is unpopular about it at least because the vast majority of those who experience it are male? Is that what makes it unpopular?
Ben Hine (22:28)
Mm.
It may be, but that in itself is a misnomer because, and a red herring, because it’s not a male majority issue. I did the first prevalence study in the UK, was published this year. We did a massive sampling exercise where we looked at ⁓ a representative population of separated mothers and fathers, and we found equal prevalence. That both mothers and fathers are equally susceptible to experiencing alienating behaviors.
Chris (23:05)
Wow.
Ben Hine (23:11)
in the literature, in the evidence that people should be relying on, it has been widely examined as a gender neutral issue. Now that’s not to say that there aren’t gendered elements to the way we experience it and the vulnerabilities that we might have as mothers and fathers. So for example, fathers might be at higher risk from particular types of behaviours and generally might suffer more because they are more likely to be the non-resident parent.
so they’re more likely to have lost contact anyway, and they’re more likely to not seek help. And all of these gendered elements, and a lot of the work I have also done, is on fathers, but that does not mean it’s a father’s issue. So I could whip up right now hundreds of mothers that I know through support groups who’ve been through this as well. again, that is part of the problem, is that you can sometimes scream evidence into the void, but if the zeitgeist has been stuck on this idea that it’s a father’s issue,
⁓ And when you’ve had certain organisations that might have attracted bad press about the issue or, you know, start scaling ⁓ the government buildings, stress the superheroes and things like that, to push their own agenda and you then get the evidence lost along the way. So that’s a really good example there of a commonly held belief that is not supported by the evidence, my own evidence, I might add. ⁓
that has clearly fed into this ideology and this narrative that it’s kind of deadbeat abusive fathers who are trying to cover up their own abuse, ⁓ when that’s not the case, it’s about humans, it’s about human behaviour that can occur from either side following separation and that ultimately it’s the kids that suffer.
Chris (24:54)
So then, and I know you can’t answer this specifically, but just as the grander question, why do I think that? Like where has that narrative come from? And why is there such pushback against something that actually is affecting humans equally?
Ben Hine (25:11)
That is a heady mix of lots of different, very large concepts that come and clash together. Our stereotypes about men and women more broadly and the types of behaviours they exhibit. Our stereotypes around parents who are primary caregivers, who are secondary caregivers, who are more valuable, with the commonly held belief being that mothers are more valuable and they have this more unique bond with children, fathers don’t do as much, etc.
Those come along, they clash with our stereotypes around abuse, know, who are generally the more abusive people, men or women, and all of that kind of mixes together and clashes and comes together to allow an environment where that then means that that is potentially adopted by certain actors for their own purposes, potentially, you know, policymakers or other academics who want to…
spin and present something that for whatever reason suits their either agenda or genuinely held belief from an ideological perspective. That’s what ideology is, right? ⁓ And my concern is that what that does, this comes back to my previous answer, is that that at the moment is creating such a toxic space that we can’t even have a reasonable debate about the evidence itself. And it’s
applicability and what it actually says. And that’s a really dangerous place to be in, that we have a position where, you know, for example, government and policymakers are relying on such a limited viewpoint, that they’re not opening up themselves to understand the issue more broadly, and to ultimately act in a role of safeguarding for children. That’s what the issue is here.
Chris (27:03)
which was going to be my next point to come back to, which was, and in every single case, there is at least one child who is being manipulated into ⁓ separating themselves emotionally from a parent. And you’ve experienced this yourself, and if you’re happy to talk about your experience, yeah. So like, well, what was it like for you then? And what have you seen in your own experience in terms of the commonality with…
or the children’s experiences.
Ben Hine (27:35)
So I think a good starting position on that is to make sure that listeners and whenever I talk about this is it’s about understanding the fundamental importance of attachment systems to your overall psychological well-being and coherence. So the argument in attachment psychology is that we can really only be us and have a solid sense of self and self-esteem and self-identity. If we have attachment systems,
to construct that around because we need to feel safe and we need to feel that we have people that are going to keep us safe in order to make that exploration. The reason I always open with that is that what you’re essentially then doing in alienating is attacking that system. You’re attacking the attachment system between the child and the other parent. And I think it’s very hard to understate how destabilizing that is for a child’s psychological wellbeing because the attachment system underpins
all of the other thinking and all of the other wellbeing that they have and that they do. for example, you know, when my parents were splitting and they had their ⁓ custody battle, we call it, still call it a battle, but when they were doing their parenting, co-parenting negotiation, the reason I don’t use that term is because it’s too soft, because it was a battle. It was a fight. ⁓
you know, these behaviors that were occurring were around attacking the relationship between myself and my dad by feeding me information about him, about the context within which the relationship had broken down and inducing loyalty conflict. And that was hugely stressful and damaging to me as a child. And, you know, I spoke in a TED talk that I gave recently about how, you know, I’m dealing with the fallout from that decades, still now decades later.
in terms of how those experiences wove their way into my relationship with other people, my trust of other people, ⁓ whether I can, you know, do something for me or whether I always feel like I’m performing for someone else because that’s what they wanted me to do. So I think, you know, that’s an N equals one case study of me, but I’m only saying that because that’s backed up.
by a wealth of evidence in review papers and specific empirical articles that have spoken to adults who were experienced alienation as children and report as a direct result of their experiences these outcomes as well as amazing work by an Italian team led by Verrocchio that has found longitudinal evidence that those exposed to alienating behaviors in childhood have poorer life outcomes later on in life both in mental and physical health. So
When I’m trying to make this pitch, you know, I very rarely make the pitch that it’s a parent’s issue Parents suffer don’t get me wrong. They suffer hugely From having the bond can it is suffered with their child But that’s often a much harder argument than going in and saying this is a child safeguarding issue we should be viewing this as any other form of abuse like psychological abuse emotional abuse because that’s what it is and
Yeah, it’s an interesting place to be in when you have difficulty presenting that argument because the ideological and political positioning of it is so strong that you’re failing to even break through with this argument that it’s, it’s damaging children. And, you know, some of the most upsetting attacks on me personally have been saying that, you know, I’m, I’m specifically doing this to try and protect abusers, and that I want to
cover up abuse and that I don’t care about children. And I find that really personally upsetting. I find it very difficult because I am not someone who is an ignorant person. I feel myself very well-read of the area. I’m very diligent. I do a lot of good research and I specifically am coming at this position to try and protect children from abusive behaviour in all forms. And I have a huge amount in common.
not that they would admit it with the people quote unquote on the other side of the argument who are trying to disparage me and argue against me because actually we’re actually all in this thing together we’re trying to protect children from abuse. So yeah that can be really difficult.
Chris (31:54)
Could I also suggest that perhaps part of the problem here and a good example would be that coercive control was only made a crime a few years ago, that when we come to conversations around abuse, physical abuse is now kind of caught and dry except spanking children for some bananas reason. ⁓ But I’m obviously trained in understanding attachment theory. So what you say to me makes sense.
but to somebody else, this kind of nebulous idea of, that child is going to grow up to have difficulties creating attachments and relationships.
policymakers can just go like, okay, well, but the child is fine. Look at it. Basically.
Ben Hine (32:41)
Yeah.
Yeah. And, you know, again, that’s, that’s the difficulty here. Because actually, when you look at those more implicit or subtle or undetectable, or, you know, shadow forms of abuse, whatever, however you want to describe them, they are very difficult to not only theorize and explain the evidence as well. So and I’ve never stated that that isn’t difficult. Absolutely. And
Also, it’s about translating that either to the layperson on the street, to someone in the judiciary, to the police force. Like you said, we’re educated and trained in that specifically. Trying to translate attachment theory to other people can sometimes be difficult. ⁓ But that doesn’t mean it’s any less profound. It doesn’t mean it’s any less important. And just because something’s difficult doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be done.
⁓ And we see this really disappointing slide at the moment where actually the courts are moving in a different direction. They’re removing more more psychology from their considerations. ⁓ Whereas actually the danger in that is that they do get overly focused on the more overt and obvious things that they can see and go with that. ⁓ Whereas, you know, these types of behaviors and alienation particularly, but any form of coercive control, it’s very subtle and it’s designed to be that way. It doesn’t mean it’s any less damaging.
doesn’t mean it’s any less real, but it’s hard. People don’t like hard things. They don’t like things that take time to grapple with. If someone’s punched someone and there’s a bruise, right, we can deal with that, because that’s black and white. ⁓ And of course, a policymaking position, there is also always considerations of things like resourcing, money. Is this something that’s going to take us more time and energy and resourcing to figure out and do properly?
Well, if it is, they’re less. Yeah, right. And you know, yes, exactly. Or should it be a priority? And then when you add all of the other stuff into the mix, like the gender stereotypes, the parenting stereotypes, and if you have this belief that it’s an issue that I mean, you’ve got to understand. I’ve said already that it’s not a gendered issue. But say we took it as face value said, okay, is the thing that affects fathers, you’re then getting to the point where you have to understand a lot of people that they might not admit it.
Chris (34:30)
Should it be a priority?
Ben Hine (35:00)
are fundamentally comfortable with the idea of cutting fathers out.
Like that is a widely held position within our society where we fundamentally devalue a father role. You see it day in and day out, you see it in different micro expressions or macro expressions. And I think people don’t have, and I know for a fact, they don’t have the same uproar and the same passion about a father being cut out than say if court would suggest, you can’t see the mother anymore. There’d be outrage.
The ⁓ reason that’s a problem from a developmental psychology point of view is the child doesn’t give a hoot because what they have done is they have in most circumstances they have built up an attachment system with both parents. So actually if you think that the father is less valuable that often almost always doesn’t align with what the child’s view is and the child’s view is they are devastated that they do not have that caregiver or they’ve been manipulated to such an extent
that they have had to then question that this person they thought was safe is no longer safe and that’s massively destabilising for them. So I think, yeah, there’s a lot going on there, which again is so far removed from the evidence base that we have and that I’ve written about several times.
Chris (36:21)
we could get into that, like the deep psychology of that, but then I think people would start to switch off. One of the areas that this screams to me is we know that one of the biggest predictors of male suicidality is relationship breakdown. So not only are we talking about relationship breakdown, we’re talking about separated father. am I right that your research has highlighted
Ben Hine (36:26)
Hahaha
Chris (36:50)
even higher rates of suicide in separation of relationship, but then add on separated fathers. So what do we need to understand that culturally we are missing? Because if we are still saying men are less valuable to children, the men don’t feel that clearly because that is utterly devastating to them.
Ben Hine (37:17)
We don’t place value on men and their contributions. And I think fundamentally that’s a line to underline a lot of these things that we’re going to talk about. whether it’s when we’re looking at the fact that men are the overwhelming majority in prison, they’re the overwhelming homeless population, they’re the overwhelming majority of workplace deaths, the overwhelming majority of suicide, yada yada yada. In society, we tend to just not care about them.
⁓ And that is through those socialized ideas around men, how they should cope with things, whether we should care about them, that they’re tough, that they’re strong, that they’re independent. And it gets socialized into the men in terms of how they deal with those things, i.e. where it gets too much, they either externalize through anger, substance use or suicide. And so, you know, we’ve got a real difficulty there in terms of how we understand and how we…
develop that empathy. So taking separated men, example, separated fathers, we knew from previous research that men are divorced men are about nine to 11 times more likely to engage in suicide ideation and completion than women following divorce. So we already know that there’s a vulnerability from relationship breakdown. When you add them in as fathers, my own research found that of a sample of 1000 men over 1000 men that had approached a service to help them with family breakdown, 42 % of those men
said that they had experienced suicide ideation in the previous 12 months.
So you clearly have, clearly, undeniably, and this is reinforced by the qualitative evidence where I spoke to 30 men in interview, half of them had expressed that they had had ⁓ severe depression, partial suicidal ideation, two of the men actively admitted that they were currently suicidal during the interviews, one of which I never heard from again, even following secure debrief and robust debriefing.
And I have had personal experience of talking to separated fathers on social media platforms where they have expressed active suicidal issues and obviously I’ve engaged in appropriate signposting. There is no… Yeah. Yeah.
Chris (39:30)
just say that as well, Ben, like 42%,
that those are the men that are still alive.
Ben Hine (39:37)
Quite, quite. And those are the men also that are having the ⁓ ability and the strength to reach out to this service. out of all of the men out there, separated men out, separated fathers out there, who knows how high that percentage could reach? 42 % in and of itself is alarming, right? So if you, if you have this idea, and I’ve, you know, I’ve worked through the maths, you know, in my, in my own head that we have a hundred thousand people getting
Chris (39:56)
Yes.
Ben Hine (40:07)
so getting divorced every year. this isn’t including separation, this is just hardcore kind of divorce. 100,000 people every year, 100,000 couples getting divorced. no, 100,000 people, sorry, so it’s 50,000 men. If you take a 40 % chunk of that, you’re looking at 20,000 fathers, men, sorry, every year that are potentially suicidal. you’ve got…
These aren’t small numbers is the point that I’m trying to get across here. No matter which way you cut it and whether you’re talking about divorce and separation or fathers or men in general, either way, something about relationship breakdown, especially when it involves children, is really, really difficult for men. And we are not doing anything as far as I can see to support that, especially on a statutory level. Now,
They’ve just announced the government have just announced the new men’s health strategy and I will be I have fed into that and I will be feeding into that as part of the Center for Policy based research into men and boys and we will I’ll be highlighting this issue because it’s a health issue suicide of course. But it’s it is amazing how many of the men in that study in the interview spoke about the lack of visibility and the lack of empathy for their situation. ⁓
you know, a lot of people would just automatically go to well, there must have been something they did to prompt the breakdown, that it was their responsibility to seek help if they did. And if they did, they were kind of seen as weak for seeking help, you know, all of these really, yeah, all of these really damaging things that are fueled by those masculine stereotypes that men should be able to take care of themselves. you know, it’s again, it’s one of those areas that I myself have built the evidence base around the evidence is there I’ve
Chris (41:40)
Victim blaming.
Ben Hine (41:56)
tried to speak some MPs, some are really receptive, I’m working with a great MP at the moment who is a separated father himself who wants to champion this area. ⁓ But it’s hard sometimes, it’s hard to grift into these spaces and really get people to pay attention, especially when you’re talking about men, people seem to switch off. And so we try and talk as much as possible about the children affected and things like that. yeah, it’s a strange, strange old world actually.
Chris (42:26)
It reminds me of towards the end of my time in journalism, was fortunately cut short by COVID, I guess. There was a report at the end of the COVID crisis and it was that the report suggested that women were the biggest victims of COVID. And then the report also mentioned at the end, but more men died.
Ben Hine (42:47)
Yeah. And you know, it’s, yeah, it reminds me of a…
Chris (42:48)
Which is just, excuse me? What sort of…
Sorry, go on.
Ben Hine (42:54)
No, sorry, I didn’t mean to talk over you, that’s the worst thing you can do in a podcast. But it just reminds me of a quote from years ago, I believe it’s a Hillary Clinton quote, where she was speaking, I believe it was the UN, and she said, the biggest victims of war are the women and children left behind. And it was so symbolic of this idea that, know, surely the biggest victims of war you’re talking about is the men that have died, not the women and children left behind because they died. You know, it was just that.
such cognitive dissonance around how you’re framing an argument. And I think that’s again, the type of thing that we see over and over again, where we just, make every effort to bend over backwards to erase men and their experiences. You know, if you have something that ⁓ affects women as a majority, then men are erased because they’re the minority. So people say, they’re the minority. We don’t need to focus on them. And if you have something that majority affects men, like homelessness, prison population, workplace death, suicide,
all the interventions I end up seeing are almost always targeted at women as the minority population. So either way you’ve got this skew and this bias of either ignoring men because they’re the minority or ignoring them because they’re the majority, which I always find is a very interesting little quirk that we have as a society.
Chris (44:13)
When people hear this and if they took snippets of this conversation out of context, I presume it could be heard as two men lamenting the plight of men, which in part it is. And I’m gonna do the yes and approach again, which is to say, yeah, I agree with all of that. And is it also fair to say that a large portion of responsibility on this is that
in your profession, in the psychology profession, as a man you are a minority. As a therapist, as a man, I am a minority, hence Men’s Therapy Hub. That actually, as men, we have been, historically, not the ones that have needed the support as much, or at least have…
embodied the version of ourselves that will suggest that we don’t need help and therefore actually we don’t help our fellow man because I don’t necessarily think it is incumbent upon women to create a load of abuse shelters for men because men didn’t create them for women, right? And it’s not to feed into the gender war but it is actually to say like women have done a damn good job of
of advocating for the sisterhood, I had literally sent an email out to all of the therapists on Men’s Therapy Hub today, right? So 140 therapists are paid up as of today, hooray. And I was like, as I said in the start, there’s only 70 people who are following this podcast. So that means there’s ⁓ at least half, but a bigger percentage of men who aren’t doing that. And I said in it like, this is a bit of a heartfelt plea, because as men we don’t…
lift our brothers up because historically it’s been an us versus them in terms of men versus men So we’re not good at supporting each other historically and we are just starting to learn now I think in the past two years suddenly see all these men’s organizations going. shit. Wait. Yeah Hey guys, should we get in a room together?
There wasn’t a question in that.
Ben Hine (46:30)
No, but I there is in the sense that you’re putting across this really powerful argument and they get like like you preempted it’s one I agree with to a point and the reason our caveat is that there’s a lot of a lot of the time that argument is presented with a lot of blame behind it and you often hear One of the biggest caveats is when men talk about their issues one of the biggest things that is said towards that is well Yeah, and who set that system up?
it’s men that are the problem in the first place. And there’s parts of that I agree with, there’s also parts that I disagree with in the sense that
The system, we have to look at this from an intersectional point of view, i.e. I think a lot of people would argue that the system that we have that is constructed around us is largely constructed by upper class rich men who are constructing a system to serve their own purpose and that churns all of us up within it. And I think if you talk to white middle, white working class boys, they’re certainly not benefiting because they got the worst educational outcomes in schools at the moment.
If you’re talking to, you know, a black working class man in inner London, I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t agree he set up this system because it’s not serving him. So I think we need to break, we need to do a couple of things. We need to break out of this idea of universal privilege. This is one of the most difficult arguments that we have is there is this idea at the moment that all men are more privileged than all women. Like it’s a universal privilege status. And that’s not the case because all of us have different
things that we are more or less privileged on. So I’m probably more privileged because I’m middle class, I’m not privileged because of other area of my identity, X, Y, and Z. And so when we kind of clap back and we say, well, yeah, but men are men are privileged, women aren’t, I think we need to take that into account. First of all, we need to it’s okay to hold space for this idea that men have problems and that they have problems due to a lot of different complicated factors. I think we also need to kind of
be clear on this idea of what we mean when we say men can lift other men up. Because we also need, we all have a role in creating the environment in which that’s okay. And yes, men have a big role in that, but I women do as well. Because I speak, you know, spoken to plenty of women who, they say that they want a certain thing and they want equality and they want this, but actually some of the stuff they say is reinforcing those stereotypes as well. So just as how we have to change our view of women, I think women have to change their view of men.
So it can’t be a siloed activity, but by the same token, yes, it does need to be led. Because actually men are the only ones that really understand what men want from those spaces. It’s the same. I wouldn’t want women to set up shelters for men because they’ve already tried and it doesn’t work because they do it based on their lived experience. this is why we have buy and for services because you need people who’ve had that lived experience to set up a service because they know what works for them.
So, again, it’s about nuance. It’s about bringing nuance to all of these arguments. So rather than just saying, it’s men’s responsibility, well, yes, to a point, but we need to make sure that everybody’s on board with softening these gender role ideals so that men can do that. And we need to nuance this idea around privilege, and we need to nuance this and just all be a bit more reasonable, to be quite honest, and just have a think and say, look, we clearly have an issue. Take any given issue, say clearly we have an issue with male suicide.
rather than jumping to this idea of saying, well, that’s because men don’t express themselves and blaming them and then saying, well, men have got to fix it. We can take a step back and think, OK, why is suicide the leading cause of death for men aged 15 to 45? What can we do about it that shows that we actually care about men and that is led by men with the support of women? Those are the types of conversations we need to have.
Chris (50:30)
And just to add onto that, I appreciate the pushback. hope that listeners aren’t, I hope I’m not hemorrhaging listeners right now because I’ve come across as hating on men because actually what my belief is, is it’s very hard for us as men to do this work when we have been actively socialized away from empathy and compassion. So I don’t think there should be billionaires.
Ben Hine (50:54)
100%.
Chris (51:00)
Right? I think that’s absurd. I also think that these guys who have all this money, there are so many rich men out there. I spoke to Dr. Luke Sullivan about this and there are so many people out there who have so much money. They could be doing so much good work to help men, but they don’t because we’ve been socialized as men to step over each other and be the lone wolf, the sigma male these days. You know, and so that’s the frustration. So I think I agree in part with what you said.
Ben Hine (51:22)
and
Chris (51:30)
I also think that a lot of men maybe would like to help their fellow man, but they don’t have the tools for it. They don’t have the skillset. They don’t know where to start. And perhaps collaboration isn’t inbuilt necessarily into the male psyche.
Ben Hine (51:47)
Well, and I think this then leads us really nicely onto what does work and what can we do then. And I think it’s about constructing spaces that appeal to that halfway house between getting men from where they are to where they want to be or need to be. that’s things like, you know, ⁓ if we know that men don’t do very well at sitting and looking each other in the eye and opening up everything about themselves, we need to think about, what does work and what can we do that appeals?
to lot of those gender stereotypes without crudely reinforcing them and without dumbing things down for men. So one of the brilliant things that, for example, Men’s Sheds do is that they get men doing activities so that they have something that they’re working on, they’re collaborative, and it’s something to keep them occupied that then allow them to open up. And so it’s that type of thing where we’re saying to ourselves, OK, how do we provide an effective solution here, knowing men?
for what they are, knowing what they do like, knowing that they’ve grown up in this system that I agree absolutely socializes them to not care about their fellow man and to step over them and to be competitive. How do we use that to our advantage? And how do we kind of reverse psychology them into opening up without reinforcing the stereotypes and without dumbing things down? And that’s what the six principles in my book, Current Issues Facing Men and Boys at the end really kind of encapsulate is.
what are the guiding principles that we need to operate by? And one is exactly that. It’s about making things accessible to men, meeting them on their own terms, meeting them in their own spaces so that they feel comfortable to start breaking down those barriers and those walls. And what you often find is that men open up and engage in things that they view as feminine if they are able to compensate it with a hyper-masculine element.
So what I mean by that is if you approach men and they are in the pub and they are drinking beer and they are playing darts, things that we think is stereotypically masculine, they might feel more open to opening up because they’re protected by that super masculine environment. Does that make sense? it’s like, it’s okay to do, yeah, it’s a payoff, exactly. So that’s what I talk about when we’re running interventions. If you bring them into an environment that’s already undermining their masculinity.
Chris (54:01)
It’s a payoff.
Ben Hine (54:12)
i.e. a typical therapeutic space which is very calm and often feminized and is one-on-one talking that’s already undercutting their masculinity so they’re not going to go further with it if you bring them into a space like men’s sheds do like a tool shed get them working and building something they’re like ⁓ iron man hear me roar so actually now because i’m being so masculine i can slip out a bit of something that’s feminine so it’s just about
I think we’re just at a stage now and obviously we want to move beyond this and keep growing and keep, but for now, if you’re talking to me about what works, that’s what works. It’s about thinking about what do men want, what are they comfortable with, meeting them on their own terms, and it’s ⁓ mental health by stealth.
Chris (55:00)
And that’s what Mark Brooks in one of our first episodes, it’s on men’s terms and on men’s turf. And then once you have them, because in essence what you’re talking about is the very reason that Men’s Therapy Hub exists. And listeners are going to get tired of me talking about this, but the reality of going through psychological training and therapeutic training and counseling skill training and recognizing, well hang on a second.
Ben Hine (55:05)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
Chris (55:27)
we’re not encouraged to meet men as I will do with swearing, with joviality, with crude jokes sometimes, with sometimes a bit of force, encouraging, challenging. It was all very softly, softly. that, sure, that might feel nice for a time, but that’s an alien concept.
And what you’re trying to do there is you’re trying to say to a man, come into a space that already feels uncomfortable for you and be something different than who you are rather than, hey, do you know what, man? This is fucking weird, right? Can we acknowledge that this is weird and can we be in the weirdness together and can we allow you as quickly as possible to feel like it’s okay to be fully you here? But that’s not the perception of the therapy space. And that’s why Men’s Therapy Hub is by men for men. And…
Ben Hine (56:09)
Bye.
Chris (56:27)
I take incredible amounts of inspiration from Men’s Sheds, Andy’s Man Club, all of these places that are by men for men because the evidence shows that they were.
Ben Hine (56:39)
Right. And there’s other pockets of evidence that support that approach. You know, I did a lot of work in my PhD thesis randomly on, you know, how men connect with each other. I’d looked at boys and girls and how they’re nice to each other. you know, even from that early age, know, boys value humour to make connection. And so if you’re stripping that out of a therapeutic space, they’re not gonna, you’re depriving them of that avenue to relate to you as a therapist. And so,
It’s things like that that show the fundamental teachings of this area and the training in this area is a feminized model. And that’s fine if it works for women and some men, but you are automatically from the get-go, excluding a client base, because you are not going to be accessing your average kind of maybe tradie guy.
⁓ who wants to come and talk about their problems, they’re not going to go anywhere near a traditional therapeutic setting with a 10-foot barge pole because it’s seen as an offence to their masculinity, undermines their masculinity, they know they’re going to be, you know, talk therapy, they’re to have to talk to someone one-on-one, probably a woman, all this kind of thing. And so Mark encapsulates it brilliantly in that term.
men’s terms and men’s turf, know, and mine like mental health by self, you know, we need to be smart about this, we need to think about how we’re to reach men, ultimately, the men that need it the most, because it’s those men who are going to be at most risk, you know, construction that was rated recently as like the loneliest job that men feel the most loneliest in, you know, it’s those men who aren’t going to go to traditional therapy. And, you know, I think it’s wonderful that we can start having these conversations of thinking what
works therapeutically, it’s things like activities, it’s things like meeting them on their own turf, it’s simple things as visibility. You know, that’s another thing that Mark talks about really, really well is about how you advertise and how you pitch and how you campaign. ⁓ yeah, so you know, it’s like, yeah, we’re putting up, you shouldn’t put up flyers for men in a GP’s office, because they’re never there. They don’t go, they only go if their legs falling off. And if their legs falling off, they’re not going to read a flyer. You know, where do you need to have them? You need to have them in
Chris (58:38)
Yeah, he’s great on that.
They’re not looking at flyers.
Ben Hine (58:55)
football stadium toilets. You need to have them in places that are traditionally male dominated and male spaces in order to reach them. you know, it’s a lot of, when you actually think about it, it’s a lot of quite obvious solutions really.
Chris (59:11)
I’m gonna let you go, but before you go, I’m gonna ask you the question that we ask everybody at the end, which is, I am gonna give you the keys to the vault and you have unlimited funds to create something or do something or change something. And you can’t just give it to your favorite football team or your mates, right? You can’t just keep it for yourself for a really good holiday. What are you gonna do with that money? And where are you gonna put it?
that you see is going to make the single biggest change in the area that you would like it to happen.
Ben Hine (59:47)
So my answer to that would be I would provide funding for ⁓ family support hubs for separation that were statutory funded and available within the community to everybody. And the reason I would do that is because at the moment when a couple separates,
And it’s such a common problem, obviously, in today’s modern society, you know, 50 to 60 % of marriages end in divorce and so on. That’s just looking at divorce, many more in separation. And at the moment, there is no clear statutory government-backed support for people in that scenario. And these are people who probably need it the most. They’re suffering a huge relational trauma between them and their partner, especially when kids are involved. It’s really, really difficult. And at the moment, we are leaving them.
to figure that out on their own. And I don’t know whether you’ve ever sat down and tried to get people to get into divorce to agree on something. It’s pretty difficult. And let alone when that is who’s going to have little Jimmy for Christmas and they both feel that they want them the first Christmas and all that kind of thing. In other countries, the models are there. They exist that we could copy. In some of the Scandinavian countries, they have exactly that. They have government backed, government funded hubs where as soon as you separate, you can go and you can sit down with a licensed mental health professional.
as a family and as a couple, talk about your issues and work through them and make sure that you have someone facilitating orientation towards the best needs of the child. So if I had unlimited funds, that’s what I would install up and down the country. And we’d probably throw in some other services for families just because they’re there, but specifically support for people separating because that’s what I’ve seen to be really important in my area. And that would hopefully have made the difference to my situation as a child as well.
Chris (1:01:38)
Love that. I know you’re not supposed to have favorite children, but that’s probably my favorite answer so far. So thank you, Ben. ⁓ Thank you for giving us your valuable time. ⁓ I didn’t mention at the start when we were emailing each other, I saw your email signature. I think it lists 10 different organizations you’re involved in. So I don’t know how you even found an hour to give us. I’m so grateful that you did. If people want to find you, reach out to you, where do they go?
Ben Hine (1:01:42)
Ha ha ha ha.
You’re welcome.
Yeah, so they can, anyone can email me, my email is always open at ben.heim at uwl.ac.uk if they have anything they want to ask or questions or anything they want to talk about. And probably looking at the UWL website on my page will give some idea of my research. And like I said, I have two books out at the moment, one’s on parental alienation, one’s on current issues facing men and boys, and they’re both available on Amazon. And I have a new book out on parental alienation next year with Rootledge, which I will.
share some info with you about as well for anyone interested in that topic.
Chris (1:02:38)
I will put that in the show notes. Wonderful. Thank you so much, Ben. I will speak to soon.
Ben Hine (1:02:44)
Thank you. Thanks for having me.
